when the president came to office we had about 170,000 americans in harm's way in rairk and afghanistan. he vowed to end both wars responsibly and that's exactly what we're doing and we've been on a very deliberate trajectory in afghanistan to continuously draw down our troops after we built up afghanistan's capacity to deal with its own security problems. we've seen them deal very effectively with the recent elections and we believe the mission going forward in 2015 with the support they'll get from our troops and from the nato mission that will continue, will help them to continue to do that job. >> tony, i guess -- this is an incredibly complicated situation and i think you can make the argument either way. we know from reports that there are a lot of afghanistan citizens who are deciding on who they'll electricity for their next leader based in large part regarding their decision on the bilateral security agreement. not because they think u.s. forces have -- their presence has been flawless but they're seen as the sort of bullwork against the taliban.